News + Updates

'Center Theatre Group''s Michael Ritchie and Edward Rada say they expect a $500,000 loss. As the nonprofit''s nest egg shrinks, it needs a fundraising push. By some measures, L.A.''s Center Theatre Group is the busiest nonprofit stage company in the nation — and it''s the biggest by far outside Manhattan. But now this theatrical giant is in serious need of more than a little help from its friends.'

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Kate Burton: Books, theater run in family
For about 10 years, you could usually find a book narrated by Kate Burton on the best-seller lists.
Burton will step in as host, replacing the show''s founder and host, Isaiah Sheffer, who died last month, when "Selected Shorts" is performed at Berkeley Repertory Theatre this weekend.
Burton, who will read Edna O''Brien''s "Violets," will be joined by Linda Lavin, Michael Imperioli (of "The Sopranos" fame) and René Auberjonoi...

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"Because they''re building a dam across the Cahulawassee River. They''re gonna flood a whole valley, Bobby, that''s why. Dammit, they''re drownin'' the river...Just about the last wild, untamed, unpolluted, unfucked up river in the South. Don''t you understand what I''m saying?...They''re gonna stop the river up. There ain''t gonna be no more river. There''s just gonna be a big, dead lake...You just push a little more power into Atlanta, a little more air-conditioners for your sm...

'Adapted from the play Farragut North, by Beau Willimon, the film harks back to the character-driven political thrillers that Michael Ritchie and Alan J Pakula used to make in the early 1970s during the Watergate era – films like The Candidate and The'

Timeline

Learn about the memorable moments in the evolution of Michael Ritchie.

CHILDHOOD

1957Birth
Born on October 17, 1957.

TWENTIES

198022 Years Old
Ritchie began his professional career in the theatre in 1980 as a production stage manager in New York.
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Over the next 15 years, he stage-managed more than 50 shows on and off-Broadway including productions at Lincoln Center Theater, Circle in the Square, Circle Rep, the New York Shakespeare Festival, Playwrights Horizons, City Center and the National Actors Theatre.<br /><br /> Among the notable productions he stage managed were Our Town with Spalding Gray and Eric Stoltz, Timon of Athens with Brian Bedford, Heartbreak House with Rosemary Harris and Rex Harrison, Candida with Joanne Woodward, You Never Can Tell with Uta Hagen and Philip Bosco, Arms and the Man with Kevin Kline and Raul Julia, A Streetcar Named Desire (two productions: one with Blythe Danner, Aidan Quinn and Frances McDormand, and the other with Jessica Lange, Alec Baldwin and James Gandolfini) and Present Laughter with George C. Scott, Nathan Lane, Christine Lahti, Jim Piddock, and Kate Burton. Read Less

In his first four seasons at CTG, he premiered the musicals The Drowsy Chaperone, Curtains, 13 and 9 to 5: The Musical (all of which moved to Broadway and received a combined 25 Tony Award nominations). He has produced 18 world premieres including the musicals Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and Sleeping Beauty Wakes, and the plays Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, Water & Power and Yellow Face; and he presented a broad range of plays and musicals ranging from Dead End to Romance to The Black Rider to blockbusters such as Jersey Boys, Edward Scissorhands and Mary Poppins. <br /><br />In addition, Michael inaugurated CTG’s New Play Production Program, designed to foster the development and production of new work. <br /><br />Michael Ritchie was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. <br /><br />In 1982, while stage managing a revival of Noël Coward's Present Laughter, Ritchie met actress Kate Burton. Read Less

They married in 1985 and have two children, a son, Morgan, born in 1988 and a daughter, Charlotte, born in 1998.

THIRTIES

199638 Years Old
In 1996, Ritchie was appointed producer of the Williamstown Theatre Festival.
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New plays that began their lives in Williamstown and moved on to off-Broadway runs under his direction include Corners by David Rabe, Far East by A.R. Gurney, The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told by Paul Rudnick, Chaucer in Rome by John Guare, The Glimmer Brothers (Glimmer, Glimmer and Shine) by Warren Leight and The Waverly Gallery by Kenneth Lonergan.<br /><br /> American premieres during this time include The Late Middle Classes by Simon Gray, Misha's Party by Richard Nelson, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme by Frank McGuinness, Under the Blue Sky by David Eldridge and The Ride Down Mt. Morgan by Arthur Miller.<br /><br /> Rediscovered American classics include Dead End, Johnny on the Spot, Street Scene and, 50 years after it was first presented on Broadway -- The Man Who Had All the Luck by Arthur Miller, a production that moved to Broadway and was chosen by Time magazine as one of the year's 10 Best Productions in 2002. Read Less

FORTIES

200244 Years Old
In 2002, the Williamstown Theatre Festival was the recipient of the Regional Theatre Tony Award.

200547 Years Old
On January 1, 2005 Ritchie joined Center Theatre Group as artistic director.